Crazy idea for Axis And Allies 1940 second edition

Hello everyone! I’m back after a long absence (forgot my password, forgot to reset my password, and had a bunch of other commitments) However, now with summer quickly approaching, I will be dedicating a lot more time to 2 of my biggest projects.

The first of these is the Axis and Allies Expanded Global scenario. Essentially, it is a sandbox, Game of Thrones scenario where there are no set alliances and nations may do as they please.

Additional nations I have included are Indonesia, Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), Eastern Commonwealth of Europe (ECE), Canada, and India. I have also strengthened the Chinese.

Nations will have the ability to sway neutral to their side, engage other nations in proxy wars, and form alliances with any power they wish.

Turn order is not permanent, for it is the nation with the lowest income that starts the round. Especially during wartime, incomes will always change as will the turn order.

With Neutral Nation, players may attempt to spend Influence to gather neutral parties to their cause. When a nation succeeds in placing 4 Influence chips, they will control that Neutral Nation as their own territory.

All new technology will also be present. I will be posting updates in the form of a storyboard, making this a massive creative endeavour.

The second project is the continuance and modifications to my Alternate History stories and rules, for which game updates will also be posted.

As the Expanded Global scenario is more complex (despite play testing being achieved) I will focus my attention first to a round of Alternate History.

In some of our home games we have used Seancb’s event card house rule (some changes) and we quite like the randomness which changes each game we use them in.

As for Spain, if your adding it as an Axis friendly ally it definitely needs to be beefed up to stave off the coming onslaught from the US.  Or if just to give Spain time for Germany/Italy to send reinforcements.

Here is a variant map.
Toying with Guadalcanal, Gilbert and Line SZs to make Solomons 2 SZs from Western USA SZ…

That way, both Hawaii and Carolines get a lot of Islands within 2SZs reach.

Carolines is like the core of a seven star from which you can use 7 branches and reach every PTO Islands, except Aleutians.
Hawaii can reach all south-eastern islands, New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, Carolines, Marshalls and Wake.

DKs Hybrid PTO SZs_36_BM_revised_Midway_Johnston_Line SZ.png

I’ve always felt the same way as the jetset. For me the dice rules are an important part of the narrative aspect of the game. They allow for more surprises or turn arounds or crushing upsets at the last minute, the kind of thing that allows you to build out a uniqur story around what just happened in a given combat.

I understand the appeal of Low Luck, but the gameplay is substantially different.  A build or combat strategy that is guaranteed to come off in LL, could fail miserably in a dice game. Sure you might be able to model averages for expected results using an LL scheme to map your strategy in a dice game, but there’s always a chance that the dice end up disagreeing with you ‘that time.’

In that respect I don’t see a huge amount of cross over. Playing 100 dice games won’t really prepare you or teach you a whole lot about what to expect in an LL game. As mentioned before low luck alters a lot of things, with respect to deadzoning and strafing, the number of defensive units required to back down an attack entitely, the way the airblitz works, the way anti aircraft fire works, etc. Just too many differences to really say that a strategy that anticipates the one style of combat is going to graph onto the other consistently.

I think after playing a few games, most players are able to determine which style of gameplay they prefer. If you love the consistency of LL, and hate the unpredictably of dice, then wait for a match with another LL player. If you hate LL, but love dice, then wait for a match against a dice player. Especially in a long game like global, if you start a playing with a combat system you dislike, then chances are that the game won’t be very satisfying for you. There are enough players out there who enjoy both ways of playing that you can probably find a likeminded opponent if you just stick it out for a little while.

To the initial question about why LL isn’t used more often, the answer is probably just because the manual doesn’t offer a description of how Low Luck works, or provide the kind official endorsement for that combat system that would probably be necessary for a larger groundswell of support. In regular tournament play it foes have a bit more cache, since that is where the systemperature was first put into practice… Fortunately for those who do enjoy Low Luck, tripleA  created simple “click tab” option in the game options menu, that allows any game to be played with universal LL rules, which I think has done a lot to popularize that style of play. There are also tripleA scenerios out there which were designed from the ground up with the LL playstyle in mind, which helps. I don’t know if the G40 designers took LL into account when they created the set up. If it was designed for LL, I imagine some of starting unit distributions might have been a little different. But again the game is pretty flexible, so even a game that wasn’t created with LL in mind, can still be adapted pretty easily, although the playtime required or the usual bids might be slightly different.

It took time to establish and defend railheads in warzones. Hence, it is unrealistic in my view that a power can rail units into combat, or into tts they have just fought over.

I have no problem in being able to rail from Portugal to Moscow in one move if you control all the relevant tts from the start of your turn.

What would be neat is if you can arrange it so that all the war crimes result in IPC gains but have morality point losses.  If at some point those war crimes result in tangible bad things happening to you (e.g. Fifth column etc), then you have to balance the benefits against the potential harms and it really becomes a game of “How much can I get away with?”.

well you are right in some points and may be wrong in others. My opinion is that is excellent to develop new ideas, but you are just altering too many points.

Try to make fewer changes and them we can all together develop the game instead of replacing the game.

my idea was outmoded by subsequent house rules i made in another thread. So its basically old information that no longer applies.